“Holograms are coming fast and are here to stay…”
says Forrester Vice President and principal analyst James McQuivey in an interview with Harvard Business Review. McQuivey believes “…the momentum Microsoft will have generated will force executives at your company to sidestep drones, self-driving cars, and robots to focus on this technology” and that as many as “3.6 million consumers… will try a HoloLens by 2016.” New York Times tech columnist Farhad Manjoo posits that “…caveats aside, the HoloLens is wondrous. It blew me away.”
Skeptics wondered if Microsoft could impress with such a visionary hardware launch. However, the consensus seems to be that HoloLens is not a gimmick, even if “…in need of long-term investment,” as Engadget’s Ben Gilbert states in his review of the HoloLens prototype.
HoloLens places Microsoft among Facebook, Google, Sony, and Samsung as betting that virtual reality will revolutionize human-computer interfaces sooner than later. And let’s not forget Apple’s recent patent win for an iPhone-based Virtual Reality headset.
HoloLens is scheduled to be in the hands of developers by spring. The WorldViz team looks forward to supporting HoloLens in the Vizard VR software toolkit, and will continue to adopt the best virtual reality hardware innovations for professional enterprise-class solutions.
